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The case for a COMPLETE Gangplank rework and kit change

GP has been falling out of favor since S1 with the introductions and reworks for new bruisers and champions such as Aatrox, Riven, the new Xin and Garen. GP desperately needs the same treatment. Teemo is more useful than GP, basically every other top laner provides more utility and more CC than our pirate.

My proposed ideas to make Gangplank a more fun / viable champ.

Q - GP like pirates historically, will carry 1 more pistol on him every 4 levels up to a total of 4 extra pistols. The parrley extra shots can be used consecutively like rumbles E. The animation when used consecutively will show GP tossing away his fired pistol and pulling the next one off his coat. Like corkis ultimate, every X seconds he will "load" a new one for spare. Keep the 50% mana refund for killing minions.

W - Combine his orange with his raise morale. Not only does the orange remove CC, it grants him a damage, AS, and MS steroid.

E - Raise morale is now replaced with an ability to blind. This will be a short skillshot like mordekaisers E. I'm not too clever for names, but GP like his dirty fighting pirate self can toss pocket sand or a rum and disorient them temporarily.

R - Right now the damage is garbage. It's more of a utility slow that gets less and less relevant later in the game. I'm proposing a new ultimate altogether. Let's call it BROADSIDE! have his crew come flying in on his ship and fire cannons, displacing the enemy and knocking them back slightly like Syndra would. This ability has the same range as the equalizer and the ship must be positioned / rotated to fire the correct side.

I don't think he needs a complete rework. It's basically just that the melee vs. ranged top lane issue needs to be addressed. Parrley is not enough to let him lane well against ranged tops with good disengages, but even so, he's better off than a lot of other melees. Fighters in general are pretty lousy right now with only a few assassin-y exceptions like Yi, or the insane spamminess of Yorick.

Maybe dropping Doran's Shield to 400 gold with the same stats would help. That would give all fighters another potion if they open it, or if they open something else, let them pick up the shield on an early back while having more gold toward other priorities. Fighter-assassins wouldn't get the benefit unless they actually used the shield. If the shield looks like a good item on paper but the champions that actually benefit from it aren't viable in practice... then maybe it's not really that good an item.

The ability to contribute his ult to a teamfight *while* he's splitpushing, without abandoning the splitpush the way someone like Shen would have to, ought to be unique and powerful; it's just that he's lacking enough in other areas that he's often going to be falling seriously behind by that point anyway.

P.S. His splitpush could be improved by making his E affect friendly minions, if it doesn't already.

I find Gangplank's passive to be pretty unnoticeable, actually. Sure it stacks up and gives you a semi-noticeable slow (the damage is kind of just icing), but it doesn't really add to GP's character that much. GP can already chase great with his CC removal and his extra move speed.

Let's see...better passive for the Saltwater Scourge!

Passive: Plunderer: When Gangplank successfully auto-attacks or hits Parrley on an enemy champion, that champion loses 2 gold and Gangplank earns 2 gold. This effect can only occur on the same champion once every 10 seconds. At level 6 the gold stolen increases to 3, at level 11 it becomes 4, and at level 16 it becomes 5.

Very thematic passive that helps GP slightly in lane, and mostly falls off as a kind of taunt late game. GP's kit after he's got a lot of items is already great, it doesn't need help from a passive post 11.

GP does need a rework, especially for the extremely flawed skills that are his E and R. And I hope Riot realizes how much he needs help. The idea of adding an ammo system to his Q is interesting, though it may end up being a nerf unless you do it right and the form you're proposing definitely encourages leveling Q first in every situation ever.

Nothing else I can really comment on and one of the better thought out reworks I've seen in a while.

Bonus Black Powder:
So, essentially the Q would function similar in some regards to Vi's E, Corki's R, or Teemo's Mushrooms as far as cooldown, except he'd get more "stacks" at every 4 levels. That could be worthwhile, but I think it has some issues as well.

First of all, I think if he's going to get additional stacks, it should be from Rank rather than champion level, but that's more of a consistency thing, I think only passives should gain power directly from level (and even then it depends on the passive).

Maybe have the 3rd and 5th rank gain him an extra pistol, and have it start with 2 (so still a total of 4) or whatever. It would also come at the cost of a longer cooldown for individual pistols to compensate the ability to chain 4 shots together, which I think would hurt his farm potential, particularly early on when he's got fewer pistols.

W/E Merger:
I really don't want his Steroid to be tied to his heal/cleanse. It would make it very awkward to use. While certainly having that and the movement speed buff at the same time wouldn't be bad, having the damage buff tied to it as well could cause problems where he's not able to do as much as he could otherwise because of his need to hold onto the heal/cleanse for a clutch moment. Some of this could be made up for with another damaging ability, to an extent, but then it could become too strong in matchups/battles where he doesn't need to sit on the cleanse. Overall I think it would become harder to balance, and make the use of the ability more cumbersome. Making player's have to choose timing on an ability isn't inherently a bad thing, but I don't think it would be good for GP in this instance.

Spew Rum:
Honestly I don't think that a short-range Blind (even AoE) would be good. GP has no gapcloser, so he can't jump onto a ranged ADC, and while it would help somewhat against other melee ADC and AD Assassins (though assassins are still largely ability based so it would help far less there) it would either be minimal or be strong enough to distort the meta away from that subset of champions, making it useless and imbalanced at the same time.

"They're coming at us dead on! Fire all cannons!":
This is actually a pretty cool idea.

That said I don't think it's so much lacking damage right now as it is that RNG is a pain in the arse. Perhaps some (small) fraction of each cannon ball can be done as an AoE to anyone in the target area that wasn't directly hit. Like 8% (so it'd do 173 damage at rank 1 to anyone in it for the full duration even if they never got hit directly) or something, pending testing. Or go the other way and make it 25/30/35% (or something) on the slow instead, making it even better utility.

But again, of any of the suggestions, I do like yours quite a bit. Even if it reminds me a little more of Admiral's Ghost Ship (and I'm very curious how GP makes his ship actually appear on the battlefield).